Piezoelectric

University of Michigan researchers, at their Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems, have just created highly efficient some energy-harvesting devices that use the energy from surrounding arbitrary, non-periodic vibrations.

A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have just discovered that crystals of zinc oxide, if submerged, absorb its vibrations and act like a piezoelectric material, developing areas of strong negative and positive charges.

Pacemaker owners all over the world and other people in need of a reliable, small current source will surely be glad when they'll hear that Princeton University scientists have developed an ultra-efficient (80%) piezoelectric system, able to transform mechanical work into electricity.

The world we live is full of f vibrating surfaces like train stations, dance floors and highways that that could yield a rich trove of clean, eco-friendly energy. It is called piezoelectric energy, formed by the conversion of mechanical strain into electricity.

A team of scientists at the Cornell University have developed an energy harvesting "piezo-tree" that uses the flittering of leaves connected to a piezoelectric stem to generate electric energy.

Two Europe based research institutes (IMEC and TNO), have developed a new MEMS element capable of converting vibration energy into electric power.

City College of New York researchers, led by professor Yiannis Andreopoulos, are studying how to incorporate piezoelectric electricity generators into cars and planes, so they can convert the kinetic energy of motion into electricity.

Researchers at the UC Berkeley and the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley Lab have developed a new lead-free material that generates electricity when exposed to stress. One day, this phenomenon called piezoelectricity could become as common as backyard grills.

Yesterday morning, the Hefer intersection along the old coastal road of Route 4 in Israel was the place where a piezoelectric generator was put to the test and generated some 2,000 watt-hours of electricity. The setup consists of a ten-meter strip of asphalt, with generators lying underneath, and batteries in the road's proximity.

When I was like 12, I did an interesting experiment: I connected a piezoelectric cigarette lighter to a halogen lamp based voltmeter measuring up to 3000V. The short spark easily raised the voltage above that figure. Of course, the current is very small, but the voltage is high - to the degree of about several tens of thousands volts.